From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

Key Takeaway: Q1 returns reflect a bifurcated market. Weekly data shows breadth struggling for traction. Inflation-fighting proposals are political palliatives, not economic solutions.

• There was a 50 percentage point  spread between the best performing sector (Energy) and the worst performing sector (Communication Services) in the quarter, the widest such gap in years.
• An even greater dispersion was seen between the best performing ACWI market in the quarter (Brazil) and the worst (Egypt).
• From an asset class perspective, commodities (+27%) posted their best gain in decades while bonds (-6%) experienced their worst loss in decades. The 60/40 (stock/bond) benchmark portfolio stumbled to one of its worst starts in the past quarter...

The big news of the day is centered around an SEC filing by the wealthiest man in the world.

This morning, Elon Musk disclosed a 9.2% ownership stake in Twitter $TWTR in a 13G filing. Musk has amassed roughly 73.5 million shares for a value of almost $3 billion.

According to the filing, Musk has been buying since the middle of March.

Where do you find your trading headspace?

How do you get to a place where you can immerse yourself in “the Zone” to think deeply about trades, strategies, strategizing, or new ways to approach risk management?

For me, far and away the best way to enter this zone is to go for a long walk – preferably in the mountains or in a forest. Just me, maybe my dog, and the sound of the wind whispering in the trees.

On Wednesday night, I returned from four days in the Redwoods National & State Parks of Northern California. Me and a friend hiked nearly 35 miles total.

I cannot begin to describe how amazingly beautiful this corner of the world is. It was my first time there. I took some pictures and videos, but it does not do it justice. You just cannot feel it the way you do when you’re standing amongst those towering Redwood trees and the deafening silence of the endless foggy forest washes over you.

Today we sit down and chat with Professional Trader Kimmy Sokoloff.

I'm lucky to have known Kimmy for well over a decade, and we hit it off from the start.

Kimmy went through the CMT program in the 90s. And funny enough, volunteered later on with the CMT Association to grade Level 3 exams, which are mostly essays. We joke that she most likely graded mine in 2007-2008.

While I like to look out weeks and months for my timeframes, Kimmy focuses specifically on the hours and days. A 2 week trade for her is "Long-term".

We're both trained in similar ways, as CMT Charter holders. But our experiences are different.

Kimmy spent most of her career in Institutional Sales and Trading. She spent decades on the phones all day with huge funds.

So when Kimmy has something to say, we want to listen. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

This is just too perfect.

Straight from the Monopoly Rule Book, written 90 years ago.

Who would have thought that our central bankers would be getting their inspiration from a board game?

And so what are the consequences of such shenanigans?

Well....

It's Saturday Morning Chartoons time. 

This is the weekly post that aggregates all the charts we put together throughout the week and organizes them all into one, easy to flip through deck.

You can find the whole list of trades here.

Below you'll find the full PDF of this week's charts:

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley

The relentless outperformance from commodities and commodity-related assets shows no signs of slowing.

The CRB Index is up 27.03% year to date while the S&P 500 and the 30-year Treasury bond aren’t even in the ballpark, posting lackluster performances of  negative 4.95% and negative 6.25%, respectively.

Commodities are really the only game in town these days.

With that as our backdrop, we want to continue focusing on this asset class for buying opportunities.

As many of these contracts consolidate or correct following explosive upside moves, we’re paying extra attention to those that have been basing in recent months – such as natural gas. 

Let’s take a look.

Here’s a zoomed-out weekly chart of natural gas futures:

One thing commodities aren't short on is big bases – and natural gas is a great example.

It’s carving out a...

From the desk of Steve Strazza @Sstrazza

Our International Hall of Famers list is composed of the 100 largest US-listed international stocks, or ADRs. We’ve also sprinkled in some of the largest ADRs from countries that did not make the market cap cut. 

These stocks range from some well-known mega-cap multinationals such as Toyota Motor and Royal Dutch Shell to some large-cap global disruptors such as Sea Ltd and Shopify.

It’s got all the big names and more--but only those that are based outside the US. You can find all the largest US stocks on our original Hall of Famers list.

The beauty of these scans is really in their simplicity.

We take the largest names each week and then apply technical filters in a way that the strongest stocks with the most momentum rise to the top.

Based on the market environment, we can also flip the scan on its head and filter for weakness.

Let’s dive in and take a look at some of the most important stocks from around the world.

Here’s this week’s list:

...

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

We discussed the need to look beneath the surface of the market in our Weekly Townhall and I  mentioned it again on the Townhall Takeaway Livestream. This chart for the weekend hits that point one more time. When we look across the global market composites, Emerging Markets have experienced the largest drawdown from their 52-week high. When we look beneath the surface of the indexes, the median emerging market has had a smaller drawdown than the median Developed Market or the median Frontier Market. When we look at it from a country-level perspective, trends in Emerging Markets vs Developed Markets are stronger than they’ve been at any point in the past decade. That isn’t reflected in the indexes yet, but it may just be a matter of time until we see that transition. Speaking of transitions, while this chart is still looking at the distance below 52-week highs, we are starting to find ourselves thinking more about where things are relative to their 52-week lows.    

...

The title of this post is the sound I might make if today's trade hits its profit target, helping to offset the pain I'm feeling at the pump every time I fill up my car with gas.

I was just in California this week and paid $6.00/gallon for my rental car. Ouch!!

Today's trade is in a name that has already been a strong performer this year but is showing no signs of stopping as of yet.

This is the video recording of our April 1, 2022, All Star Charts Crypto Weekly Strategy Session.

For this week's trade, we're putting on a $CCJ September 30/40 Bull Call Spread for an approximately $2.20 debit. This means we're long the 30 calls and short an equal amount of 40 calls for a net debit which represents the most we can lose in this trade.

Get the full details, risk management procedures and targets for this trade here:

We begin today’s discussion with a special situation that took shape this week.

At the end of the day, what we’re trying to do here is create a universe of stocks that are experiencing bullish activity from investors who have better information than the rest of us.

Typically, this information comes to us in the form of SEC filings, options flow, or through congressional reporting. But that’s not always the case!

From the desk of Steven Strazza @Sstrazza and Ian Culley @Ianculley  

It finally happened…

The yield curve inverted for a brief moment as the 2-year yield rose above the 10-year earlier this week. 

But whether or not it inverted yet is beside the point. It’s been flattening for a long time, and that’s the direction we’re headed in. It's only a matter of time.

While media outlets and fearmongers will spin this development as an urgent warning of an impending bear market, here's what you need to know: Throughout history, equities have done well during and after inversions.

This commonly observed leading indicator has a tendency to precede major market tops by years, not months. In other words, there's still time. The average lead time is about 18 months after prior inversions. 

More importantly, when it comes to forecasting bear markets and recessions, many experts will argue that it is actually not the 2-year we should be focused on, but the 3-month yield. 

And...

Guess where we're at again?

We're at a point where the Adani Solar System constituents get another upgrade (well, wherever applicable).

Are you invested in the Adani group stocks? Then this would be a good post for you.

The Adani Group Solar System has been one of the most talked-about posts here at ASC and one can see why! For the most part, we keep upgrading the targets unless the trend suggests otherwise. It's true that not all stocks are outperformers, but the ones that are, are doing pretty great.

So let's take a look at where these stocks stand today.

First up, we have the ASC Adani Group Index. A quick peek at this and you see a resistance around the corner. So the move that we're witnessing now could take a break. This is an absolutely logical place for that to happen.

Click on the chart to zoom in.

But what helps get a better perspective, is the next chart. This is the Adani Group relative to Nifty 500.

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

This year’s March Madness has been maddening indeed. Brackets were busted early and often. Three of the #1 seeds lost before they even had a chance to play for a trip to the Final Four. As challenging (and exciting) as that was, I’ve got a deeper frustration with it: It’s a passive participant’s paradise. 

Let me explain. 

Before the field of 64 is even set, we get deep dives on the various teams and their prospects. Stats are analyzed, stories are told. When the brackets are set, the picking begins. Though no games have yet been played, participants reason through potential matchups, from the first round all the way through to the finals. Bragging rights (and often more than that) are at stake for having properly allocated all your resources before the first whistle is blown. It’s about setting and forgetting. No feedback loops, no opportunities to adjust exposure based on changing tournament conditions.

This is the video recording of the March 31st Weekly Town Hall w/ Willie Delwiche & JC Parets

03/31/22 2:00 PM ET

Something we’ve discussed a lot is the bullish information we receive when there is a multitude of buying by separate insiders in the same name.